A typical user's interaction with communications received over a network is ever increasing. For example, the user may send and receive hundreds of emails and instant messages in a given day, may access websites to receive web pages, and so on. Therefore, the user may receive a multitude of different types of communications which may provide a wide variety of functionality. However, as the functionality that is available to the user has continued to increase, so have the malicious uses of this functionality.
The user, for instance, may be subject to attack from a malicious party which is engaging in a fraudulent attempt to obtain personally identifiable information of the user. For example, the user may receive an email which indicates that the user's account information for a particular legitimate website is about to expire, such as credit information that is utilized by the user to access functionality at the website. The user is directed by the communication to navigate to a website to update this credit information. However, this website is not legitimate (e.g., is not provided as a part of the legitimate website), but rather is configured to obtain personally identifiable information from the user for malicious purposes, such as for use by the malicious party to purchase goods and services in the user's name. Therefore, this misappropriation of the personally identifiable information may have profound effects on the user, such as by ruining a credit rating of the user, cause the user to receive bills for goods and/or service that were not purchased by the user, and so on.
Therefore, there is a continuing need for improved techniques to protect personally identifiable information.